A Cottage by the Sea - On My Mind

Change of plans

2/26/2020

Due to the Coronavirus, I’ve cancelled my 3/6-3/20 trip to Italy. There is too much uncertainty: the healthy issue, and the possibility that I could get over there and then not get home easily. My idea of solitude does not include being sequestered at the Marriott Hotel at Logan Airport!
    Before I go on, let me acknowledge that I consider this disappointment not worth crying, complaining, or feeling sorry about. After all, it is my good fortune that has created it.
    That being said, how do we deal with disappointment when something we want and feel right about has been taken away? I have no control over the Coronavirus, but I can control what I do NOW in terms of my time and activity. For the past twenty years my solitary trips to Italy have been important stepping stones on my life journey.
   Now, what will I do during the two upcoming weeks? What will replace walking the streets of Rome and Florence, visiting the museums, and enjoying Italian cuisine? I don’t know. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I started cancelling my reservations. I do know, however, that what is before me is a combination of the choices I can make and the mystery and miracles of the unknown. Stay tuned.

Gentleness and strength

2/21/2020

Gentle is my word for the year. I want to be more gentle. To paraphrase Br. Curtis Almquist of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, “I am gentle, except when I am not.”
     And yet, a single quality cannot stand alone. Pablo Casals speaks to my particular word: In life one must show strength and gentleness. Gentleness without strength will never produce worthwhile, satisfying, or comprehensive results. Whatever your word, you can’t have one without the other. For example, we can’t function only with cold water, nor would hot serve all our needs. It is not an either or choice.
    Gentleness just came to me as my word for the year; I didn’t analyze what the ‘best’ word would be. Briefly (no more than a minute) I tried out a few other but no, gentleness was IT. Gentleness to balance my strength because sometimes my strong personality expresses itself with a sharp edge that cuts out the gentleness of the heart that is called for and that I want to express.
     Right now the challenge is to know when to call on kindness to blunt my strength. I’m still in my head about it, but I trust that the thinking process will diminish and natural knowing will take over. It is something akin to turning on the hot water to wash dishes and the cold to take a drink; we know what to do.

Priceless Gifts

2/19/2020

Priceless Gifts
By Anna Swir
(1909 - 1984)
English version by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

An empty day without events.
And that is why
it grew immense
as space. And suddenly
happiness of being
entered me.

I heard
in my heartbeat
the birth of time
and each instant of life
one after the other
came rushing in
like priceless gifts.

www.Poetry-Chaikhana.com

Just listen

2/13/2020

I’m a one-on-one kind of friend. I prefer a conversation with one other person. Currently, however six of us get together once a month to share what’s going on in our lives. We are long-time friends, and by that I mean we’ve known each other for at least forty, and for some, fifty years. Now that we are older, with grandchildren in college or close to that age, we need each other in new and deepening ways.
     We bring our own lunch to someone’s house; the hostess supplies water and a comfy place to sit. Each person shares what’s going on in her life; the rest of us listen. Perhaps we comment or ask a question, but whatever we say is an affirmation. Mainly we listen.
      This feels like a new kind of community for me. When I taught I was in charge of the classroom community. As president of The Whole Language Teachers Association I set the agenda and controlled the discussion. My contribution to church committees has been to further a specific task or purpose. The back and forth in a one-on-one conversations encourages me to listen so I can respond specifically to what the other person has said.
    The undefined rules and expectations of this group of friends feel different. I listen to hear what they say, full stop! To use another expression, I listen to ‘get’ what they say, to ‘get’ who they are. I’m just beginning to unravel what this means, but for a start, this kind of listening stop judgments before they begin, or at least doesn’t give them free reign.

My whimsical blog

2/10/2020

In the past 24 hours I have received two unsolicited emails offering services “to improve your business over your competitors” and “to help you developing on your site because you can get so many new customers everyday”. Clearly ‘they’ didn’t read my posts!! I’m not a business nor do I think of my readers as customers. Silence, solitude, and simplicity mix like oil and water with competition.
Recently a reader asked me if I there could be a way she could get email notification when I posted. I looked into it and decided the answer was no. On a practical level, getting such an announcement started felt like a lot of work, and it would cost money. On a spiritual level, well, it wouldn’t not be in the spirit of how I envision this blog.
I like that I don’t know many of the folks who reads it; I like that readers find it randomly, and maybe keep returning, or maybe let it go. My posts are practical and straightforward, because that’s who I am. However, I like that the blog floats around in cyberspace and then mysteriously lands on someone’s desktop. I like that there is a whimsicalness to it all, like life and death.

A blog about solitude

2/7/2020

A blog for those who are looking for silence, solitude, and simplicity, and who sometimes want to be alone.
That’s what I wrote over ten years ago on the home page of this blog, and the focus still stands. In fact, the home page hasn’t changed much except for biographical update (which I ought to again), the cover of Very Grateful: The Story of My Hundred Year Old Mother and Me, and the addition of three topics: A Solitary Traveler, Secrets of an Old Woman, and Compassionate Reading.
I began this blog when I began going to the cottage by the sea. It was there, for those five winters that I settled into solitude. My life now has a different rhythm with less extended days of solitude. I miss that, but I still have hours of solitude in each day, and I still travel alone for two weeks time.

Spend time with positive people

2/3/2020

Spend time with positive people is one of the ‘nuggets of truth’ I wrote about in The Teacher Book: Finding Personal and Professional Balance, a book I published in 2000. That nugget is still with me twenty years later. It is not that I avoid all negativity. We all have difficult things going on in our lives, and at times we need to pour them out to someone. I can listen to that, and I am very grateful that I have friends who do the same for me. By positive people, however, I mean those who desire to get out of despair, not those who seem to want to remain in a ‘poor me’ state.
I believe that good conquers bad, that every human being has a beautiful soul, and that we each have a choice to go high. Those who are profoundly stuck in negativity need a listener who will remain with them through to the other side. I know when I am not that person. I know my limitations. That’s what I mean by my choice to spend time positive people.

Praying for hope

1/31/2020

My commitment has been to refrain from getting into politics on this blog; my hope is that what I have to say here continues to honor that commitment.
I’ve watched the impeachment hearings and am sad at what indisputably will be the outcome. I am not sad for me, as much as for majority of people in our country (and in the world). I will be fine; very little will change in my life, because I am a white privileged woman with enough money to keep my life style, and with limited years remaining to get caught up in the aftermath of a rough president and the dismantling of the Constitution of the United States . Sad is a soft emotion, one that fits my situation, but not strong enough for most of humanity.
As a person of faith I am praying that love, truth, and hope surround every senator and every person effected by their vote.

Elizabeth Gilbert and radical compassion

1/25/2020

Yesterday as I started listening to Tara Brach’s interview with Elizabeth Gilbert on Day 5 of the Radical-Compassion Challenge, I thought to myself; you don’t need this, you don’t need this ‘crazy’ tale. But I continued and am very grateful that I did. My personal world doesn’t include stories or people that Gilbert tells about, and yet the human desire for love is there in everyone. Hearing about the suffering of others helps me be compassionate towards others and honest with myself.
      Here are a few of my personal take away from the interview.
   This deep longing, which Gilbert names as love, is within everyone. I have a church and faith tradition that keeps me tapped into the love, but that not the only way for people. I had a mom who opened up that love inside me and nurtured it within me during her long life and continues to be there for me. Mothers may not be ‘the one’ for everyone, but I believe there is a special someone who offers that love to every human being.
    Sometimes we can’t help people in their struggles, but we can love them. What a relief. We can’t fix people but we can love them while they are doing their own repair work.
   I believe that life is good even in the midst of pain. I have to take time to pray/meditate/sit in the silence to tap into that love that is within me.

https://www.tarabrach.com/calendar/radical-compassion-challenge-free-10-day-online-event/

Radical-compassion challenge

1/21/2020

The Radical Compassion Challenge, led by Tara Brach. I’m giving it a try. Check it out. It’s free. Daily guided meditations; interviews with leaders in the field, challenges to try.
    Why did I sign up? After all I’ve tried on-line courses before and never completed one of them. So why this one?
    On the practical level, it’s free and I’ve agreed to be compassion buddies with two friends who have joined the challenge.
    On a personal level, I need help. I know that guided meditation will help me with my paltry meditation practice.
    On a soulful level, I need help. I know that the compassion I feel for others is more in my head than in my heart, where I want it to be.
     I’m not going to summarize the teachings and learnings from each session. Sign up if you want those details. I will, however, give you a few nuggets. Here’s today’s. Nothing new, other than refreshed awareness.
     Take three deep breaths when you find yourself becoming upset about or preoccupied with something.

https://www.tarabrach.com/calendar/radical-compassion-challenge-free-10-day-online-event/